How Arkansas nearly lost a 'living press'

The 10th anniversary of the near closure of the University of
Arkansas Press passed with only casual notice this spring. And that, in itself,
is a shame.

Those two weeks in 1998, following University of Arkansas
Chancellor John A. White's poorly thought-out decision announced March 24, were
a time that galvanized those of us in this state who love history, the printed
word, poetry and books of all kinds.

White, for the record, was closing the press over a long-term
bookkeeping debt of $2.5 million, he said.

The press' debt had accumulated over almost 18 years.

By way of full disclosure: As a full-time beat reporter for
the Northwest Arkansas Times when it was a proud newspaper, not a wrap-around
section of the state's largest newspaper's edition printed in Lowell (Benton
County), I covered this story.

Two days into the scrape, I was not at ease with the decision
to close the state's only academic press. It was while calling each and every
UA board member for their thoughts that I got a sense of how bad the decision
was. Most toed the party line of supporting the administration's need to bring
spending in line, but one UA board member broke ranks. Asking to go off the record,
he whispered into the phone, “Don't let this go unchallenged.”

In phone calls, letters, e-mails and whispered encouragement
all over the campus, more and more reasons for the state's flagship university
to keep the award-winning press alive came to light.

While the UA Press' 17 employees were admonished not to talk
to the press, many bravely spoke out — their jobs, as they knew them, were
already gone. In Little Rock, Bobby Roberts of the Central Arkansas Library
System and Tom Dillard, then with the Butler Center, began to initiate legal
action to keep the UA Press alive.

The behind-the-scenes
pressure was building. Finally on April 1, White said he would “restructure”
the press, in essence putting off the June 1 closure and trying to work out
details of the remaining books, authors and projects in the UA Press pipeline.

On April 9, in a hastily
called press conference, White, with UA President Sugg in attendance, issued a
terse reversal of his decision to close the press. White didn't seem to like
the song he was selected to sing.

White spoke at a podium in the Heritage Room just off his
freshly remodeled executive office. In back of the podium stood a bookshelf
full of UA Press titles. This collection had been just feet away from White's
office since his taking the chancellor's job the July before.

Twelve days later, after the decision to leave the UA Press
alive, Tyson Foods donated $1.5 million, a nest egg to keep the press afloat.

Since Jan. 1, 1999, the UA
Press has proudly published an additional 244 books. It has also taken on
additional partners, such as the Ozarks Foundation Society and Phoenix
International (a small Fayetteville press) and the Butler Center for Arkansas
Studies, to boast of another 35 titles.

Of the top five best sellers of the press to date, only two
were on the list prior to the 1998 effort to shut down the press. They are
(from first to fifth), “An Arkansas History for Young People,” “The Apple That
Astonished Paris” by U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins, “Arkansas: A Narrative
History,” “Long Shadow of Little Rock” by the late Daisy Bates and “The Blood
of Abraham” by former President Jimmy Carter.

The decision to save the
press recognized that a major academic press was about more than just printing
books and making money. I dare say no other press in the nation would have
devoted the resources to the 50th anniversary of the desegregation of Central
High School as did the UA Press. I dare say few other presses would have
published many of the books so dear to those of us like Roy Reed's epic bio of
Orval Faubus, the Nan Snow and Dorothy Stuck book on Roberta Fulbright, or even
those slim volumes of poetry that continue to win national and international
awards. Collins' novel, published by that little press in the Ozarks, has been
a capstone to his career.

So let's not forget the time the UA Press almost suffered the
same fate as the University Museum, the old 4-H Building (now a paved parking
lot), the Carlson Terrace complex (designed by award-winning architect Edward
Durell Stone), the Summer Fulbright School of Public Affairs for high school
seniors and the prestigious Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences advisory
board — all gone under the regime that is to end soon.

"18 Wheels Rolling to Arkansas” is one of the cutest Arkansas-themed books to come along in a while. Geared towards young readers, the 24-page soft cover book by Lavaca elementary school teacher Dasha Headley is a labor of love dedicated to her late fathe

A new work of youth fiction, “Running the Dogs” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $16 hardcover), by Thomas Cochran, comes dripping with family holiday warmth and a regional spice as true as sawmill gravy straight out of south Arkansas and north Louisiana.

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